My good friend Frans Pop died on the 20th of August, just over a
week ago. We had worked together for several years within Debian
(especially within the Debian CD team), and we had become firm friends
during that time. He was great to work with, always ready to help
design new features or pick holes and find the bugs in the stuff I was
developing myself, happy for others to dig into his own projects. On
the more personal side, we met up many times at different Free
Software events like DebConf and FOSDEM, and also for pure social
things like BBQs and parties. We shared a lot of good times.

Last week, along with some other Debian people who had worked with
Frans, I headed over to the Netherlands for his funeral. His family
also asked me to talk about him, and I was honoured to do so. I spoke
briefly about Frans' work in Debian, highlighting the areas where he
worked and the number of people he had worked with in various teams. I
also told the group about the massive number of messages of sympathy
and condolence which I had been asked to pass on from all over the
world. His family knew that Debian was important to Frans, but were
not aware of just how wide his influence and effect had been. They
were especially surprised and grateful that people had travelled so
far for the funeral; I told them that I would not have missed it for
anything.